Step Back in Time: A Historical Stroll with Austin Daily Herald

This past Saturday, the first public tours were given at the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry Preserve and Wanhi Yukan Trail. The tours come after many, many years of hard work and diligence not only to develop a supremely historical site, but to ensure that this window to the past is used in the proper way.

Dating back to the 1950s, when the chert quarry was discovered by Grand Meadow resident Maynard Green, the site is a unique vision of what has been here before. Dating back thousands of years, Native Americans gathered at this spot beneath oak savanna to gather and work the stone known as flint in Europe.

The stone itself was then used for tools that included leather working and hide scraping and played an integral role in Native American culture at the time.

Today, the stand of eight acres includes walking paths, granite blocks used for sitting and a ring used for meeting. Complimenting all this are signs designed delivering meaning to the around 100 pits making up the quarry.

Written in both English and Dakota, the signs tell the story of what archaeology discovered over the years of work and what they hope will be discovered over time.

This wasn’t a singular group working to develop what we see today along 730th Avenue, just north of Grand Meadow. Instead it was the work of the many including the Mower County Historical Society, The Department of Natural Resources and perhaps most importantly, the Prairie Island Community whose story is being told at the site. These are just a few examples.

We realize that history isn’t something that appeals to everybody, but we hope you will at least give the chert quarry some of your time. Those of us who live in areas where this kind of history is laid open should be encouraged to learn about the area we live in.

Learning this history is a chance to learn about ourselves and how we came to be and recognizes, in part, the larger picture of how to live together.

During the time when the chert quarry was fully utilized entire populations of Native Americans came together from areas across the Midwest and intermingled. For a time, they became a part of a larger family and as archaeologist Tom Trow pointed out to the site’s first group Saturday, provided opportunities to expand familial connections.

This chapter is a part of our area and really opens up what this land meant to those people here before us, and who will be using it again to further enhance the history of their own people to new generations.

At the same time, it’s just a peaceful walk through a landscape that has been lovingly tended and cared for to turn it into what it is today. A walk through the quarry is a chance for reflection and to take in what it has to offer.

The site is amazing and has been transformed from a tangle of buckthorn to a real gem of Mower County. Take the short hop from wherever you are and visit it for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.